Coming Soon.

Coming Soon.

Coming Soon.

Anastasia is part of a team that reviews more than 5,500 applicants annually to place selected interns in federal positions for the MANO Project.

Anastasia comes to Hispanic Access with a background in national recruitment and staffing, finding solutions focused on bringing great people and great organizations together. As a leader in talent acquisition, she has served various major industries and markets, and has placed diverse talent in hundreds of roles and positions. She is passionate about connecting, building, and developing BIPOC professionals.

She earned her M.B.A. with a focus on global commerce incorporating accounting, economics, and social sciences from Virginia Wesleyan University. Her B.A. is also from Virginia Wesleyan University. While pursuing her education, Anastasia was a founder and member of the Hispanic Student Alliance (HSA). HSA aims to raise awareness about Hispanic culture, history, and language through different cultural, educational, social, and political activities and events. Some of the activities that HSA sponsors include Spanish tutoring, Hispanic film and poetry events, Cinco de Mayo celebration, and Hispanic Heritage Month. Anastasia is Puerto Rican and Italian and resides in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Why she works for Hispanic Access…

“I decided to work for Hispanic Access because the culture brings me back to my Hispanic roots as a Puerto Rican woman. I thoroughly enjoy working with Latino colleagues who have a similar passion for our culture and heritage and, of course, for sharing our impact with our own communities and in our public lands. I was privileged to attend university and find a great job with Hispanic Access Foundation, and I want to help other Latino students have access to the same opportunities as me through professional connections in the workforce and also by providing access to educational resources. I want to help as many students as I can in their initial steps of educational development, because education and mentorship have always been close to my heart. I remember how important my educational opportunities were to me.”

In her spare time…

“I love to read and am an active member of my international book club. I enjoy cooking experimental meals with my partner. I also enjoy being active outdoors, playing sports such as soccer, and practicing yoga, pilates, and indoor cycling.”

Her favorite book…

“My favorite book is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Not only is Coelho my favorite author, but this is my favorite book because it shares a beautiful metaphor about the journey through life and how each life is essentially one's own personal legend. It tells the story of a shepherd boy who yearns to travel the world in search of a great treasure, and we follow his adventures across the Egyptian desert to meet the alchemist who shares with him this idea.”

A person she finds inspirational…

“Frida Kahlo is a highly motivational leader to me. Not only is she a phenomenal painter of Mexican heritage—and known as a master of self-portraits—but she is also an example of a Mexican woman who followed her greatest dreams, amongst all pains that she had to endure in her physical and emotional life.”

Luke oversees fundraising for Hispanic Access Foundation—leading corporate, foundation, government, and individual donor outreach.

Luke is a millennial Mexican American who was raised in the outdoors and is especially drawn to Hispanic Access’ conservation programs. Ever since early childhood, he has camped, fished, backpacked, and explored the outdoors. In high school, Hispanic Access gave him the opportunity to travel out West to explore the beauty of America’s national parks and to highlight the issues surrounding them.

Those experiences and his love for the outdoors inspired him to study environmental biology and chemistry at Christopher Newport University, where he graduated magna cum laude. Although his education focused primarily on science, Luke made it a priority to infuse his environmental studies with policy analysis and discussion. To Luke, the relationship between people and their world is the most central element to understand.

Why he works for Hispanic Access…

“My environmental biology background and experience volunteering with Hispanic Access in 4Stops1Destination, fishing events, tax education workshops, congressional hearings, and passing out materials at congressional offices gave me a deep appreciate for the work Hispanic Access was doing. When the opportunity to join the team came up, I was fresh out of college. I immediately applied so I could continue contributing to the conservation and environmental policy work our organization carries out so authentically.” 

In his spare time…

Luke can be found reading, working out with his brother, hiking and camping, playing with his corgi and tabby cat, watching movies, and cooking for friends.

His favorite book…

“The Alchemist. It has a deep-rooted wisdom woven into the fabric of a beautiful and captivating story. Any time I read it, I feel compelled to take a step back from life and consider the value of my existence and what I want to leave here when my story is over.”

A person he finds inspirational…

“Maite Arce. As her son, watching her create and build Hispanic Access and become a well-known Latina leader in the U.S. has been a privilege and a learning experience like no other. Maite will often say she has always strived to be a servant leader, and I think she is the epitome of it. She has faced obstacles with a brave heart and determination. She overcame her own insecurities and managed an unimaginable amount of stress for the benefit of others, sacrificing along the way (while still raising her wild teenage boys—successfully, I might add). Her perseverance has been rewarded; her vision has become a living thing. Maite leveraged relationships and integrity, nimbleness and authenticity, learning on her own the how-to to make it happen. Her motivation and contributions have meant the transformation of thousands of Latino lives in the U.S., and the elevation of the Latino voice in the national narrative—no small feat. Many regard her with great esteem, but no one more than I.

Public lands are a key component of our identity, and they weave a narrative of the diverse and complex history of our nation. These places, all of which are Indigenous ancestral lands, preserve our shared cultural heritage, provide places to recreate and connect with nature, spend time with family and our communities, and significantly contribute to industries, local economies, and millions of jobs and employment opportunities. Latinos have been an integral part of this shared history. However, our access to public lands, the equal representation of our cultural heritage, and our workforce contributions are not always acknowledged or represented.

All communities should have equitable access to nearby green space, the ability to reach it, and features that honor and welcome diverse languages, inclusive histories, and uses of parkland. Natural areas and natural resources should be managed inclusively and locally, reflecting the communities they serve, with co-stewardship by Indigenous and tribal nations. Given historical inequities, nature deprivation of communities of color, and the theft of lands belonging to Indigenous communities, the priority of nature protection and restoration efforts should be in communities of color, particularly in urban areas and those historically marginalized and on the frontlines of environmental injustice.

Why is this important to Latino communities?

Latino Access & Health

• The U.S. Latino/Hispanic population is 18.4% and is forecast to rise more than 30% by 2060.
• Latinos have the highest prevalence of adult physical inactivity (32%), followed by non-Hispanic Black (30%), non-Hispanic Indigenous (29%) and non-Hispanic white (23%).
• Latinos and other communities of color in the US are three times as likely to live somewhere that is “nature deprived” than white communities. This means there are far fewer parks, forests, streams, beaches, and other natural places near Black, Latino, and Asian communities. This “Nature Gap” has left a legacy of poorer health and COVID-19 severity, higher stress levels, worse educational outcomes, lack of recreation and business opportunities and greater vulnerability to extreme heat and flooding in these nature-deprived neighborhoods.
• Latinos are 21% more likely than whites to live in urban heat islands, or areas dominated by asphalt and concrete where parks, shade-providing trees, and other vegetation are lacking. Urban heat islands can produce breathing difficulties, exhaustion, heat cramps, heat stroke and even death.
• Areas within a 10-minute walk of a park can be as much as six degrees cooler than surrounding parkless areas. However, parks in majority non-white neighborhoods are half as large and serve nearly five times more people than parks in majority white neighborhoods. Also, parks serving majority low-income households are, on average, four times smaller and serve nearly four times more people than parks that serve majority high-income households.

Latino Cultural Heritage and History

• The U.S.Latino identity is composed of many narratives; there is not one dominant story that can completely tell the history and the contributions of Latinos, nor any particular community or culture, to the United States. For example, 20.3 million Hispanic Americans identify as multiracial.
• Too often our stories and contributions to this nation are not represented in the narrative that our public lands and designated historical sites portray. Thus, the protection of existing monuments and historical sites, such as Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in California and Casa Amadeo in New York, and the creation of new parks and monuments are an opportunity to expand our nation’s narrative to be inclusive of the histories and contributions of diverse Latino communities throughout the United States.
• Since 1906, when Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law and granted the executive office the authority to establish national monuments, 17 presidents – nine Republicans and eight Democrats – have used the law to protect our natural and cultural heritage. Opportunities to protect the heritage and open spaces treasured by people of color abound, from designation of the Castner Range National Monument in El Paso, TX, to Avi Kwa Ame in NV.

Latino Recreation

• Demographics are changing: The Latino population is the largest-growing minority population in the United States and is estimated to comprise 28% of the U.S. population by 2050. Latino participation in outdoor recreation is growing, and new outdoor participants are more likely to be nonwhite. The future of public lands and public health thus depends on engaging and welcoming our diverse youth.
• As the Latino population becomes larger and more complex, their outdoor recreation preferences and perceptions are also changing. When asked which types of outdoor recreation they participate in regularly, Latino voters said that 75% participate in hiking, running or walking, 44% said camping, 39% said picnicking, 32% said bird watching/viewing wildlife, 21% said mountain/trail biking, 26% said off-road riding/snowmobile, and 26% said boating/rafting/kayaking.
• Latinos are great users of public lands — 88% of Latino voters in the West have visited national public lands in the past year.
• Asked about what policymakers should place more emphasis on in upcoming decisions around public lands, 73% of Latino Western voters pointed to conservation efforts and recreational usage, prioritizing that over energy production.

Latino Jobs & Economy

• 70% of Latinos see public lands, such as national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas as helping the economies in these states.
• 92% support addressing the backlog of infrastructure repairs, reducing risk of wildfires, and natural resource protection on national public lands such as National Parks by providing jobs and training to unemployed people.
• The outdoor recreation economy generated $887 billion in consumer spending and 7.6 million jobs in 2019.
• 79% of National Park Service employees are white, and 62% of all employees are male. Black employees comprise almost 7% of the NPS’s permanent full-time workforce, significantly less than the 13.4% of Black people in the national population. Hispanic and Latino employees also are underrepresented, making up 5.6% of the Park Service general workforce despite accounting for 18.5% of the population. Lack of racially-diverse representation is common across the U.S. conservation workforce.

Latino Public Opinion

• 87% of Latino voters in the West, and 89% in the Chesapeake region, support setting a national goal of conserving 30% of U.S. land, waters, and ocean by the year 2030 (known as 30x30).
• 84% of Latino voters in the West, and 89% in the Chesapeake, agree that we should create new national parks, national monuments, national wildlife refuges and tribal protected areas to protect historic sites or areas for outdoor recreation.
• 75% of Latino voters in the West and Chesapeake region agree that we should strictly limit where and how new oil and gas development takes place on public lands.
  • 93% of Latino voters in the West support requiring oil and gas companies to use updated equipment and technology to prevent leaks of methane gas and other pollution into the air; 86% support requiring oil and gas companies, rather than federal and state governments, to pay for all of the clean-up and land restoration costs; and 68% support increasing the fees that oil and gas companies pay to have the opportunity to drill on national public lands.
• 82% of Latino voters in the West, and 90% in the Chesapeake, support directing funding to ensure adequate access to parks and natural areas for lower-income people and communities of color that have disproportionately lacked them.

The Colorado River is the backbone of the West. The film Milk & Honey explores the intriguing relationship between the Latino community in Yuma, Arizona and this important waterway.

Robert brings nearly 15 years of communications, marketing, design and social media experience to Hispanic Access Foundation. Throughout his career, he has worked with numerous nonprofit, public-policy and service-oriented organizations. Robert has provided communications support to HAF since its founding in 2010, and eventually assume a full-time role in September 2013.

Prior to joining HAF, Robert served as the president of Fanger Public Relations, where he led communications projects and campaigns for clients such as Hispanic CREO, GEO Foundation, Starfish Initiative, IUPUI – School of Public Health, Center for Education Reform, and several others. Before launching his public relations firm, Robert served as the communications director for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, which was created by the Nobel Laureate economist in 1996. His work appeared in many of the nation’s largest newspapers, including USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, as well as on some of the largest broadcast programs including CNBC, Kudlow and Company and ABC’s 20/20.

Robert has also served as a communications director and consultant for many congressional and statewide political campaigns. In addition, he has taught college courses on internet/online communications and strategy. Robert is a graduate of the Pulliam School of Journalism at Franklin College and holds an MBA from Purdue University.

Maite’s family emigrated to the U.S. from Mexico in search for work and a better life in the 1970s, and she was raised in Southern California. While working in the nonprofit sector for many years, she realized how much easier life could have been for her parents had they had access to information, resources, and personalized guidance to help them navigate the surroundings of their adopted country upon their arrival to the U.S. Her family has since become naturalized citizens, active voters, and engaged in community service.

Maite is the Founder of Hispanic Access Foundation. She has fifteen years of experience developing innovative outreach strategies that effectively mobilize under-represented populations working with faith and community based leaders with whom she designs and executes data driven and measurable outreach initiatives.

Maite formerly served as Vice President of Operations for the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options (Hispanic CREO), increasing Latino parental involvement in education and public policy participation among Latino faith and community leaders. Maite received an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters from Logos Christian College in Jacksonville, Florida.

BIO needed